Australasia Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: Australasia

19
Jun
2015

Skippy Cake For Sara. Kinda, Maybe, Sorta

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Australasia, Birthday Cake, Cake, Children's Cakes

My friend Sara recently sat, and passed with flying colours, her Australian citizenship test. By way of celebration, she asked me to bake her a cheesecake. Sara has asked me many times to make her a cheesecake and, to date this has not happened. This time was no exception

“In honour of your new Australianness I will make you a Skippy* Cake” I said.

There was a long pause. Then.

“What’s a Skippy cake?”

That night I emailed her this picture of a Skippy Cake which is from “The Party Cookbook” from 1971, edited by Ann Marshall and Elizabeth Sewell.

The next morning she sent me this:

Well, never let it be said that I’m the type of gal who goes around promising to make people Skippy Cakes and not delivering, so, here it is Sara, your very own Skippy Cake!

Actually, rewind and delete that. I am exactly the kind of gal who promises a Skippy Cake and does not deliver because sadly, Sara works in our Canberra Office and I am in Melbourne. Technically, yes that 1400 kilometre round trip is do-able in a weekend. But so is an ultra-marathon. And I’m not doing one of them either!

The Skippy Cake and the Mushroom Cake I made a few weeks ago got me thinking back to the awesome cakes my mum used to make me.

There was this when I was….hmmm….how old? Four? Six? If only it was completely obvious what year I was celebrating….

And she crocheted that purple dress for me too!

A few years later and I got my very own Dolly Varden! The utter joy of this was hard to describe. And her skirt is the exact same colour as my 5 year old birthday dress!

It’s just a shame you can’t see the detail in the dress. It was gorgeous! And every rose, every detail hand made! There was one to top that too. One year she made me a.market barrow full of fruit and vegetables and flowers. So imagine this:

But in cake and LOADED with vegies, fruit and flowers. Hundreds of teeny hand made fondant apples and roses and oranges and eggplant, bananas and tulips, pumpkins and tomatoes…it was loaded! And how did we repay her hours and hours of painstaking work? By not taking a single damn photo.

How much do we suck? We are the worst family in the world. Seriously.

So, filled with nostalgia, it was it was hardly surprising that my eye was drawn to this in my local supermarket on the weekend:

The cover calls it Australia’s most famous children’s cake book. Others go as far as to call it the “best book ever written in this country”.

And you know, there’s not that many children’s cake books that have a comedy routine and a song dedicated to them.

So fancy a peek at some of my faves?

For the budding artist there is a paint palette:

Got a mini-maestro in the house ? How about a piano cake? Can you believe it? A freaking piano! Can you see why this is ~~Australia’s most famous children’s cake book?~~ ~~the best book ever written in this country?~~ the best book ever written?

And the one I always wanted and never got. The Pool Party cake. If I didn’t already have an AMAZING cake figured out for my own birthday this year, I would be making this one. Next year for sure!

I mean they’re no Skippy cakes but they are all kinds of awesome.

Not all is wonderful though. There is a very cryptic message in the forward where editor Pamela Clarke advises that “four of your little friends are missing”. I really want to know what those four missing cakes are. Obviously something nowadays seen to be massively politically incorrect – my money is on at least one Golliwog. It’s certainly not gender based stereotypes because the book is full of them. The section on boys cakes has 3 cars, a rocket and a helicopter. The girl’s cakes have a sewing machine, a stove and a dressing table. It would really piss me off except that stove cake is just adorable!

Then, there is some stuff that borders on the downright creepy. Take this thing, called a Mary Jane, which looks like it should be the leading role in a horror film:

And surely you’d only make the Happy Clown if you wanted to psychologically scar your kids for life.

But then clowns totally creep me out anyway. This is how much. You know that actor Brian Dennehy? I watched him in a movie where he played John Wayne Gacy aka The Clown Killer. This sounds like he killed clowns but he actually dressed up as a clown and killed young boys. Lots of young boys. And then buried them in the walls of his house. Since seeing that, I’ve never been able to watch anything with Brian Dennehy in it again. Because in my mind, he is a creepy clown serial killer. Which I’m sure he isn’t. I’m sure he’s a lovely man. But that movie scarred me. Don’t take my word for it. Watch this. And tell me it doesn’t give you the screaming heebie-jeebies. Mute your sound though, I don’t know what that noise is but it’s awful. The entire movie can also be found on You Tube if you want the full extent of the horror.

What? How did we get onto serial killing clowns? We’re meant to be talking about cake dammit. Children’s cakes in general. Skippy Cake in particular. Here is the recipe which I followed pretty much exactly. It’s a really nice butter cake even if you don’t want to go the full Skippy. Do try the toasted coconut over the icing though, that was delicious.

You don’t have to use all that food colouring. You could puree some raspberries for the pink cake. I didn’t even bother with the yellow colouring in the icing because kangaroos are brown or grey not yellow. I added some cocoa powder to the icing mix to make it brown but the coconut pretty much covered it all up anyway. And remember when I destroyed that curry with the bright green pandan essence? No you don’t because that’s a kitchen nightmare I’m saving for a special occasion. Well that’s what I used to make the grass.

The hardest part was making the kangaroo template:

The actual cake was lovely!

For those of you who might not know, the cake was named after a very famous Australian kids tv show called Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Skippy was a problem solving kangaroo. It was set in a national park and if hikers got lost, Skippy would find them or if someone fell into a hole in the ground Skippy would summon rescuers to help them. Iconic childhood viewing!

Also, you may be wondering what happened to The Skippy Cake seeing as Sara did not get it? Well it just so happens that it was my bosses birthday that same week and he just happens to support a football team called The Kangaroos.

I took the Boomerang part with Sara’s name off and we ate that at home and then I took The Skippy Cake into work and we had a birthday morning tea. I went back into the kitchen an hour or so later to wrap up the last few pieces for some of my friends who were not in that day and it had all been eaten so I think everyone liked it. My boss even took photos and showed his kids that night!

And I already have an order to make a cake for someone else’s birthday.
He wants a cheesecake….

Hope your week is a piece of cake!

Signature 1

23
Jan
2015

Drunk Food – The Meat Pie Floater

categories: Adelaide, Australasia, Meat Pie, Soup

I guess each culture has a food they like to eat when drunk. The Brits for instance love a curry when they are five sheets to the wind. Closer to home, we in Melbourne like nothing better than a kebab or its Greek cousin, the souvlaki. Ahhhh….greasy meaty goodness wrapped in pita bread…deeelicious whatever you call it. There was also a spate, back in the 1990’s of mobile hot dog vendors but they were a passing fad. Nothing beats the 3:00am drunken kebab. Not in this town anyway.

So ubiquitous is the post pub/club kebab run that I assumed it was a national pass-time. Oh, so wrong. A few years ago I ventured across the border into South Australian territory for a wedding. Post-wedding we ventured into the casino and post-casino we ran into one of the weirdest instances of drunk food I have ever seen. Which of course, in celebration of the month of crazy and Australia Day (January 26th) I am going to replicate here. We’ll return to that in a moment.

But first, Adelaide. It’s a weird place. City of Churches and bizarre serial killings. And before anyone from South Australia gets their knicks in a knot. It is true. Dexter said so.

And…the very second I typed Adelaide and serial killers, the little app that I have that tells me about related content brought up an article on a body found in a wheelie bin. You can fool some of the people some of the time South Australia but the internet will not be fooled. I on the other hand….did I say I lived in Melbourne? I meant Sydney. Or Perth. Yeah, Perth. It’s even further away and in the opposite direction. Yep, I definitely live in Perth. Just in case you are thinking about crossing any boundaries with your serial killer ways, take a leaf from the Village People and Go West.

But I digress, we’re here to talk about food. Australian food to boot. The picture above shows one of the classic legendary Australian dishes. The Meat Pie. Second possibly only to the Vegemite Sandwich as THE Australian dish.

We love to eat our meat pies with a bit of….and now here’s some Aussie slang for you….a bit of “dead horse”. And no, not in that ooky, literal European way. “Dead horse” is Australian rhyming slang for tomato sauce. That would be ketchup to my American friends.

And in ~~Melbourne~~ Perth this is how we eat our pies. Just as pies. With ketchup. Lovehearts optional.

And, if we have soup…lets just say a rather hearty pea and ham soup. We have it like this. Just soup. Maybe with some crusty bread. Or a crouton.

Let us now return to the street outside the Adelaide casino at 3:00am.

The BF had gone over to the van to get us each a kebab. He came back empty handed and shaking his head. “It’s not kebabs. It’s pies and soup.”

“Ewww…who wants soup at this time of night. But I’ll have a pie. ”

“No, it’s not pies and soup. It’s pies IN soup”

I honestly did not believe him. Until I wandered over to take a look.

And sure enough….pies in pea soup…..

This is drunk food in Adelaide. Seriously. Loveheart optional.

And if you don’t believe me, here’s some independent confirmation.

I told you they were freaky over there.

I would love to tell you that I tried this and despite all my ~~Victorian~~ West Australian prejudices it was awesome.

Except it wasn’t.

It wasn’t as repulsive as I thought it would be. But it was definitely a whole that was a lot less than the sum of its parts. And nowhere near as good as a kebab.

Maybe you need to be drunk to enjoy it.

If you want to try this delight for yourself, you can find a recipe for a Beef and Shiraz Pie here. I have used this recipe before and it is a beauty, however I just bought the ones I used for this. I made the soup though and it was really good. I subbed in chorizo for the more traditional ham and it made the soup super tasty! Recipe below.

I am looking forward to a long weekend celebrating Australia Day. Just not with a meat pie floater….

Have a great week where ever you are!!! I would also love to know what constitutes drunk food in your neck o’ the woods. Drop me a comment….

Pea and Chorizo Soup

Print Recipe

A delicious hearty take on a pea and ham soup – a classic winter warmer

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

1 tbsp olive oil
3 chorizo sausages, removed from their casing and diced
2 carrots, peeled, diced
2 sticks of celery, peeled, diced
1 onion chopped finely
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
300g green split peas
2litres cold water
Salt and Pepper

To Serve

Warm bread rolls or a meat pie and sauce

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Rinse the split peas under cold running water until the water runs clear. Drain.
Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the chorizo and cook until the meat is browned. Add the carrots, celery, onions and garlic and cook, stirring occaisionally, until the onions are softened.
Add the split peas and water. Bring to the boil over high heat.
Reduce heat to medium low and simmer, covered for about an hour or until the split peas are cooked.
Allow to cool slightly then process the mixture to your desired level of “chunkyness” either using a stick blender or by processing small batches of the mix in a blender.
Season with salt & pepper.
Serve with warm bread rolls if you are normal or with a pie and sauce floating in the centre if you are not.

Notes

I like my soup fairly chunky so I usually only put about a third of it in the blender.

21
Oct
2012

Retro Food For Modern Times: The Floral Foraged Feast

categories: Edible Flowers, Foraging, Melbourne, Salad, Something New

What we’re going to do right here is go back, way back, back into time…

Today we are leaving behind those heady patchouli scented days of the ’70’s to take a step back to some really retro food and talk about my experience as a food forager! Food foraging has been around for as long as people have been around and basically involves making lots of deliciousness out of stuff that is growing wild around you…well, that’s my definition…if you want to get more technical, try google! When most people think about foraging, they probably imagine it being done in the country however urban foraging is becoming increasingly popular.

Part of my birthday resolutions this year was to do something new each month – which is why a few Sundays ago, I found myself sipping a Cleavers smoothie with a group of strangers. I was taking part in an Edible Weeds Walk run by Very Edible Gardens (www.VeryEdibleGardens.com). The smoothie was really good and set the tone for what was a very pleasant and informative few hours. During that time we were taught to identify a number of so-called weeds and learned how these could be used both as medicine and as food.

The setting was amazing, an urban farm, virtually under the domes of the Russian Orthodox Church in Brunswick. And a glorious day to boot….one of the first real signs that Spring was on its way.

It was also just a short stroll away from the CERES environmental park and the Merri Creek Bike Track.

Mind, you, the setting did have some drawbacks, on my way back to my car, I was quite happily strolling along, enjoying the lovely view, the sunshine and my solitude, when I came across this sign, and suddenly the fact that I was alone in this large parkland became a little bit frightening!

However, I made it home safely and was able to use my new-found knowledge to make this lovely floral foraged salad! For my salad I used:

Angled Onion – stalks and flowers:

There are literally thousands of these plants growing by our local creek and whilst I had previously noticed the strong smell of onions around them, I had no idea they were edible. They have an onion flavour, much like chives.

Wild Brassica – leaves and flowers:

This too is prolific in my local area. The leaves taste like supercharged cabbage It can give you that nose tickle you get when you eat mustard. The flowers are much milder and added some colour to the salad.

Nasturtium – leaves and flowers

These were growing in my garden but the flowers are pretty and added some colour. The leaves have a peppery flavour. Since then, I have seen nasturtiums growing in the wild so this wasn’t too cheaty!

Dandelion leaves.

These are quite bitter. Adam, our guide on the walk, said that even if you do not like these the first time you have them, to persevere with them as the taste really does grow on you. Also, the bitterness is very cleansing. I didn’t mind them in my salad but I was light handed, not only due to Adam’s caution but also because the park I was foraging in had just been mown and the leaves were not that easy to come by!

Along with these foraged ingredients, to make my salad, I added some lettuce and some avocado, some thinly sliced radish and a few cherry tomatoes. I also made a very simple lemon and oil dressing as I really wanted to be able to taste the different leaves and flowers. Here are the ingredients:

This was a very tasty salad which, I will definitely be making again. I think I was right to err on the side of caution with the dandelion leaves. I chopped these up quite finely so whilst there was a slight underlying bitterness in some bites it was certainly not unpleasant and added a depth to the salad. How pretty and fresh does this look? I also took advantage of one of first really warm days and ate this outside….Voila!

The foraging itself was great fun, I really enjoyed walking through the park and identifying and choosing the weeds for my salad. There is also something incredibly gratifying about picking and eating your own produce, whether you have grown it or foraged it. In fact, foraging is a little bit more fun because it feels like you’re doing something a little bit naughty!

But really, cooking with things I have grown (or foraged) makes me feel connected to the earth and the environment in a way that shop brought produce can never do. Who knew I was such a hippy? And now for my inner risk manager – if this post inspires you to commence your own adventures in foraging, I would really suggest doing a group exercise like I did – not all plants are good for you and many can actually cause you harm. Having advice from a knowledgeable person like Adam could be the difference between a totally fun and enriching experience and one that leaves you very ill indeed!

Sorry Oscar, none left for you!

Adam, who lead our walk, has also written a fab book:

This can be purchased at the following

http://www.eatthatweed.com/edible-weeds-book/

There are a number of other books and other resources on foraging you could use as well. Here is a link to an article from Gourmet Traveller but most libraries and book shops will have something on the topic plus there is an abundance of info on the internet.

http://gourmettraveller.com.au/how-to-forage.html

I will be experimenting with more foraged finds over the next few months. I would like to try a cooked option next. I don’t think the ngled onions will be in season much longer so before they disappear I’m thinking a stir fry with some of the wild brassica, some chilli, ginger and garlic may be in order. This would be delicious as a side dish or tossed through some noodles as a lovely vegetarian main meal.

In the meantime if you make something lovely out of foraged foods, please let me know and….enjoy!